Raithe

"Are we there yet???" ..and now I'm getting flashbacks to Cthulhu Road Trip... "Moommm! He's got his tentacles on my side of the seat!!" "Just another 100,000 years to go till we get to the alignment kids..."

Well as long as you go by the first "proper" mission that all the reviewers have been harping on about and not the "trainee/introductory to the basics" section pre-augmented character.. It certainly sounds as if there's a lot of variety and pathways through the level. So if they keep that up through the rest of it... Also, for the random note of potential interest, JJB has always loved the original Versalife level design and apparently pushed for that style of multiple pathways.

Hm, so THQ has confirmed Saints Row: The Third should be coming out holiday 2011... and with the promise of the most "outlandish gameplay scenarios ever seen"... Throw in the odd swipe at the GTA series with "There's no delivering pizza, no shuttling family members about in a long series of taxi missions." That could be interesting.. Personally I found Saints Row 2 a hellava lot more fun then GTA IV.. but I'm weird like that.

And that discovering routes around enemies will also award xp... so bypassing combat is just as rewarding as plotting complete kill/ko zones... Of course, how well that'll work with letting you wander back and forth...

And that's the second reviewer I've seen mention that you earn more xp for knocking out rather then killing opponents...

Well.. I'm the unsociable one who rarely if ever plays online .. but what the hey, I'll slip into the Obsid group on steam as well.. just on the offchance..

Oh what was it.. There was a short lived tv series something like Total Recall 2070 or some such.. and they'd actually kind of fused elements of both Total Recall and Bladerunner together... And hey, regardless, how many people can forget the impression of Rutger Hauer's brilliant improvised speech at the end??

You should try reading the original Bourne book trilogy.. although they're getting just a wee bit dated now..

Watched an episode of jdorama "Gallileo". Interesting but quirky in the way that the japanese can do...

Although, remember for the really impressive... Lego House The two story house made of lego, including a working toilet, hot shower and a very uncomfortable bed

Enjoying the late night heart flutter when about 4 hours into defragging the primary drive of the computer.. it decides to lock up and then reboot...

Heh, if the trend continues.. maybe Rockstar will go back to releasing PC games...

Although you do have to ask the question.. Adam Jensen doesn't get a choice on being augmented or not.. his boss decides to have it done to save his life.... But just what kind of boss then turns around and says "hey, since we're giving him cybernetic arms to save his life..let's like.. put big, retractable chisel blades in his arms! He can use them to open cans!" Just what was the thought process there?

It's always fun when there's some baggage you just can't seem to let go of.. and every now and then something brings it to mind when you're not expecting it.

Well they already wrote a sequel trilogy of books to Bladerunner.. It was only a matter of time before someone returned the idea to hollywood.

Frankly, if you have enough personal confidence in yourself.. or absolutely no understanding of why your peers might look down on you for it.. You should never need an excuse...

Snap. I had that when I was a kid. Also the big yellow technic jcb with the pneumatic parts...

Heh, some months back whilst sorting out cupboards, I stumbled on a batch of the really old space lego stuff that was still stored away.. (none of the actual bricks though) and in a random nostalgia moment I somehow ended up building this over the course of half an hour :

They also include a "this is the most impressive attempt to make the decisions a player makes in a game mean something"... I'm not sure whether to take this as a good sign about the whole "10 year evolution of a city depending on what you do".. or whether to automatically dump it in the "bad games journalist who doesn't really know what he's talking about" cynicism...

Although I do have to admit, whilst I enjoyed reading Deathwatch and seeing just how they've set it up ..... I do kind of get the feeling that they did it less for the sense it made as a roleplaying game.. and more for the "It's Warhammer 40k. We have to let them play space marines somehow!!" As an agent for the Inquisition, or as crew for a Rogue Trader I can see all sorts of potential roleplaying arenas and potential hooks and places you can use... But Space Marines by the very nature of what they are seem quite constrained. Then add on top the secretive nature of the Deathwatch adding even more constraints... You're going to roleplay training and meditation. Then you're going to roleplay them travelling to some combat type zone. Then you're going to have lots of combat with potential recon/info gathering/ possible diplomacy talk with other members of the imperium.. then you're going to kill large amounts , before you go home. Then start all over again. I can sort of see how you can expand it a touch... but I don't know. Something just never feels quite totally solid.

I am not a skipper. Garrus is not a mighty sailing man. Wrex isn't a millionaire, nor Tali his wife. Liara is not a movie star. Joker has never taught in academia. You, Ashley, are not frickin' Mary Ann. RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGE So absolutely no Gilligan's Island references?

So for the really worrisome... The UK Government has decided to spend around

Heh, one thing I did notice when you unlock the character creation side.. If you don't want to import your saves from DA:O, they actually provide several different optional "world histories" you can choose from (with notes highlighting the key differences) such as king / queen / joint rule, if the main character died killing the archdemon or not.. all of that. So that's a step up from ME2's "everything is renegade" style of automatic play. Of course, it's probably because it's just the demo (and a fan-mod unlocker for character creation) but I also noted when I ran through the "import save" that while it tells you all the key plot points of your save.. it identified half of them as wrong for my saves...

And takedowns will be different depending on whether you've stealthed up on someone, or are running into them face first... Throw in the context sensitive aspect of what the surroundings are like as well, and they might prove quite entertaining..

So far everything they've said when specifically mentioning melee is indeed either the lethal or non-lethal takedowns you can do with fists or blades from the augmentations. Also, every takedown you do uses up some "energy" from your bar. The first segment/bar of energy replenishes itself slowly, but any others require food and snacks eaten to restore bio-electric energy... Which apparently is part of making it very hard to be wildly melee, especially early in the game. There is the close-range stungun/taser prod thing though... I don't think there's been mention of whether it's a short range gun or a melee style weapon...